Trent's Roberta Bondar Fellowship in Northern and Polar Studies
A Frost Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship
The position is for a 12 month term (with an option of a one time 12 month renewal) at a salary of $60,000, plus a research allowance. This position is aimed at recently graduated Ph.D.’s (within 5 years of graduation) with research interests in any area of Northern and Polar studies, focusing on, but not strictly limited to, Canada’s North. The candidate is expected to reside locally and participate in the general milieu of Trent and especially its Northern Studies activities. Specific duties consist of teaching one course equivalent in the area of the candidate’s specialty and two public lectures.
Applications are currently closed for this Fellowship.
2019-2022 Bondar Fellow - Dr. Mark Stoller
Dr. Stoller completed his dissertation at UBC in 2019, in the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program, with a focus on Geography and Political Science. He holds a Masters in History from McMaster University. His doctoral research focused on postwar northern Canadian history, with an emphasis on Dene political history and the division of the Northwest Territories. He has also worked extensively in Gjoa Haven/Uqshuqtuuq, Nunavut. He is a former Director of the Nanivara Oral History Project, and a co-founder of the Gjoa Haven Film Society. He continues to work with Inuit youth to document local perspectives and stories from the community.
2017-2019 Bondar Fellow - Dr. Lisa Janz
Dr. Janz began her fellowship in fall of 2017. During her time at Trent, she will be associated with the Anthropology Department. She delivered public lectures, and academic supervision and instruction at the graduate level.
Dr. Janz's work uses anthropological perspectives to address issues in human and landscape palaeoecology and to unravel prehistoric relationships between foragers and food-producing neighbours. Her research has established the first date-based chronology for the Gobi Desert Neolithic, demonstrated that the large Pleistocene ostrich survived in East Asia as late as 8000 BP, and developed a new framework for global shifts in diet breadth during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. In collaboration with Mongolian colleagues, new field-based research at Zaraa Uul in eastern Mongolia is uncovering evidence of human occupation dating as far back as 40,000 years, including one of only a few known Neolithic habitation sites with extensive faunal remains.
2015-2017 Bondar Fellow - Dr. Rafico Ruiz
Dr. Ruiz began his two years as the Roberta Bondar fellow in August 2015, during which he will work closely with Dr. Stephen Bocking in the Environmental and Resource Studies program. Dr. Ruiz will also deliver public lectures, as well as a new senior undergraduate course relating to northern studies that will be of interest to students in a wide range of degree programs.
Dr. Ruiz, who holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies and the History and Theory of Architecture from McGill University, comes at the study of the North with a humanities background. His research tells the story of how under increasingly widespread conditions of water scarcity, various corporate and state actors are turning to North Atlantic icebergs as a potential water source to address a future with fewer and more expensive sources of water.
2012-2014 Bondar Fellow - Dr. Allice Legat
Dr. Legat has worked with Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories for over two decades. Her work questions some of the assumptions that lie behind the distinction between universality and particularity in thinking about knowledge and caring for the land. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Aberdeen. She will spend the next two years on furthering her research while teaching an undergraduate course at Trent University.